Ever wonder why telemarketers frustrate you so much? It’s not just because they always call during dinner. It’s because they’re not actually talking to you. They’re reading from a script, the same script they’ve read off countless times before. And you can tell.
Segmenting your marketing campaigns changes this and positions you as the anti-telemarketer!
List segmentation involves taking a broad group or list and creating subcategories based on common demographic, lifestyle or psychographic characteristics. By segmenting our customers into different subcategories, we can create more targeted experiences for them that result in better marketing and a better ROI from our marketing efforts.
Taking the time to segment your marketing campaign comes with a lot of powerful benefits.
The first being the one we just mentioned — the ability to send highly-targeted messaging to specific segments. We understand that not all customers are interested in the same things. Segmenting our marketing campaigns allows us to send the DIYers a list of the top projects they can combat this spring and the Professional Contractors promotions on buying in bulk.
Do you know that friend who always gives you the best gifts? Customer list segmentation allows you to become that friend by giving your customers exactly what they’re interested in. The result is that you’re able to create a better relationship between that customer and your brand. Over time, they’ll look for marketing from you. You become the postcard they don’t throw out, the newsletter they never miss or the email they can’t wait to receive.
Of course, segmentation isn’t only about creating a better relationship with your customer (though that’s pretty great), it’s also about saving your business time and money. By segmenting your marketing campaigns, you reduce time and costs by only targeting a portion of your prospect list instead of wasting dollars sending everyone a message only some will be interested in. That’s less wasted resources and less time spent creating copy only some will want to read.
Do you know what happens when you send someone an offer that was crafted specifically for people like them? They act on it. They buy the product, they contact you about the service and they begin (or continue) true engagement with your brand. Do you know what happens when you send everyone an offer that was created for a generic, nameless customer? Basically nothing. Crickets.
Okay, so you’re hopefully gleefully riding the segmentation train. How do you do it?
While you should create as many groups as make sense for your business, start by creating three good ones. Segmenting your audience too broadly will take away your ability to closely target that segment, while segmenting too narrowly may create redundancies and/or reduce profitability. You want to segment customers by the common characteristics shown to affect conversions.
For example, if you’re a local hardware shop, you may only find that you have two customer types — Commercial and DIY. If you’re a local jeweler, you may want create an entire segment for marketing at Special Occasions, Men Buying for Wives or Bridal. Once you get into your customer data, identifying your segments should become intuitive.
The segments you create should be unique, identifiable and different from one another. If you find that segments are beginning to overlap, then you have gone too narrow. Consider if there’s a broader category both subsets would fall into. The more specific you can make your segment, the tighter you’ll be able to market to them and the more successful your campaign will be.
Once you have identified your customer buckets, you can create targeted direct, segmented marketing campaigns designed to speak directly to them. And, keep track of the users in your segment over time, as people can move between segments and in and out of the segments. Customer segmentation does not remain static. Your interests change, right? So do your customers’.
If you’d prefer not to create your own segments by hand, the Personicx Portrait Report (Learn about Portrait Reports) from MyAcxiomPartner can help you create personas around your customers. These clusters allow you to see the differences between your customer and the national average, identifying their life stage, interests and buying behaviors to give you a better understanding of who they are. By allowing the application to identify your top personas for you, you can focus back in on how to market to them.
Customer list segmentation allows you to send the right message to the right person at the right time in their buying cycle. The result is tighter messaging, happier customers, a better ROI and a better response. Why wouldn’t you segment your customers?
Ready to segment your prospect list for a better response? Get started with MyAcxiomPartner!